Profile: Solyndra Corporation

Grover Norquist, a highly influential conservative lobbyist and activist, says that if President Obama wins re-election in 2012, Congressional Republicans will impeach him to regain control of the nation’s governance. Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a hardline opponent of government taxation, tells the National Journal that he expects Obama to raise taxes on the wealthy in 2013. He is best known for his anti-tax pledge, which almost all Congressional Republicans and a few Democrats have signed, and which states their absolute opposition to any tax hikes of any kind. The online news site National Confidential says that signers who break that pledge will likely “face a primary opponent funded by Norquist and his shadowy multi-millionaire donors.” Norquist says of Obama’s record of cutting taxes on middle- and lower-class taxpayers: “He came up with this idea for the one-year tax holiday so he could claim that he’s for a tax cut. Mind you, it’s a temporary tax cut, but he does not want to run as a tax increaser. I think [Republicans are] in reasonably good shape. Between now and November, I believe we will see a one-year extension of the FICA tax [cut]. I believe we will see the extension of [the break on] depreciation spending. And then the third one that you could have is repatriation. If I was Obama’s political consultant, I’d have put repatriation on the table when he extended the Bush-era tax cuts by two years [in 2010]. The estimates are that it would bring $6 [billion] to $800 billion back. If I were president, I would love to have that money flow back into the real economy, not the Solyndra economy, the year before I’m running for office.” [National Journal, 1/28/2012; National Confidential, 1/28/2012] “Repatriation” is the idea that American corporations can receive one-time tax breaks by putting their foreign earnings into the American economy. Norquist’s reference to “the Solyndra economy” refers to the controversy surrounding the recently bankrupted Solyndra Corporation, which received $528 million in federal loan guarantees and which some conservatives, including Norquist, have attempted to tie to the Obama administration. [Investopedia, 2012; New York Times, 2012] Norquist predicts that if re-elected, Obama will allow a number of tax cuts on large corporations and the wealthy to expire at the end of 2012, and this, he says, will allow Congressional Republicans to begin impeachment proceedings. “We’re focused on the fact that there is this Damocles sword hanging over people’s head,” he says. “What you don’t know is who will be in charge when all of this will happen. I think when we get through this election cycle, we’ll have a Republican majority, [though] not necessarily a strong majority in the Senate, and a majority in the House. The majority in the House will continue to be a Reagan majority, a conservative majority. [House Speaker John] Boehner never has to talk his delegation going further to the right. If the Republicans have the House, Senate, and the presidency, I’m told that they could do an early budget vote—a reconciliation vote where you extend the Bush tax cuts out for a decade or five years. You take all of those issues off the table and then say, ‘What do you want to do for tax reform?’ Then, the question is, ‘OK, what do we do about repatriation and all of the interesting stuff?’ And, if you have a Republican president to go with a Republican House and Senate, then they pass the [Paul] Ryan plan [on Medicare],” referring to House Representative Paul Ryan’s plan to virtually end Medicare and replace it with a privatized voucher system. If the Democrats retain control of Congress and the White House, Norquist says: “Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress.” [National Journal, 1/28/2012] According to the US Constitution, “The President, Vice President, and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” [Constitution of the United States, 6/21/1788] It is unclear how Norquist frames his prediction of Obama’s allowing tax cut legislation to lapse as constituting “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes [or] Misdemeanors.”

According to data reported by the Sunlight Foundation, Crossroads GPS, the organization raising and spending money on behalf of Republican candidates in the presidential election, reported spending $500,000 on ads attacking President Obama in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Missouri. Those ads are somewhat countered by $36,000 of ads aired by Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Florida and Michigan. Under campaign finance law, groups such as these are not required to reveal their donors, though they are required to periodically reveal to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that the ads have been bought, and how much was spent on them. One of Crossroads GPS’s ads accuses Obama of funneling government money to failed projects such as solar panel maker Solyndra, and ignoring those laid off by these companies. The Planned Parenthood ad lauds Obama for protecting access to affordable birth control. Crossroads GPS is a veteran in the post-Citizens United campaign finance world, having spent some $16 million in the 2010 elections, while the Planned Parenthood group is a relatively new player in the field, making its first expenditures on behalf of House candidate Kathy Hochul in 2011. [Sunlight Foundation, 2/7/2012]

Analysis from the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that 85 percent of the spending by the top 501(c)4 groups involved in the 2012 presidential campaign has been on ads found to be “deceptive” by fact-checking organizations. Spending from third-party groups, including “nonprofit” 501(c)4 groups, is up by 1,100 percent since the 2008 presidential campaign (see May 2, 2012). All of the ads are by Republican or conservative groups; Democratic 501(c)4 groups have not yet spent any money on the race. The ads, which aired between December 1, 2011 and June 1, 2012, have either targeted Republican presidential primary candidates or President Obama. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, part of the Post’s “Fact Checker” team, recently criticized the wave of untruthful advertising, writing that “watching these ads is a depressing duty for The Fact Checker.… The erroneous assertions emerge… without any shame, labeled as ‘the truth’ or ‘fact.’” Kessler was criticizing ad campaigns by Americans for Prosperity (AFP—see Late 2004, May 29, 2009, and November 2009) and the American Future Fund (see October 12, 2010), which spent $8 million to attack Obama’s approval of the expense of “stimulus” money for “wasteful” programs that the ads falsely claimed sent American jobs to foreign countries. According to the Annenberg analysis, the four top groups spending money on deceptive ads are:
The American Energy Alliance, a trade organization that advocates “free market energy policies,” with expenditures of $3,269,000;
Americans for Prosperity, advocating lower taxes and less government spending, with expenditures of $5,018,000;
The American Future Fund, with expenditures of $6,365,930; and
Crossroads GPS, a conservative public policy advocacy group founded by former Bush administration political chief Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee director Ed Gillespie, with expenditures of $10,263,760.
Like the ads Kessler cited, many of the ads bought by the above-listed expenditures went to attack Obama over government financing of green energy companies such as the bankrupt solar company Solyndra. According to Bloomberg News, 81 percent of the attack ads against Obama in the first quarter of 2012 were about energy. [Washington Post, 4/30/2012; Annenberg Public Policy Center, 6/20/2012; Think Progress, 6/27/2012]